Category Archives: Scottish Literature

After Birth, Garnethill Trilogy

Elisa Albert’s After Birth blew me away. So much so that I just wrote the author an email to thank her for getting it right, and immediately after finishing my library copy I preordered the paperback so it can live in my permanent collection. Ari is coming on her son’s one year birthday, but her postpartum depression and inability to heal from her traumatic birth experience has her coming undone. When pregnant Mina, a former rock legend, moves to Ari’s small town up the Hudson,…

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In the Kingdom of Ice, The Princess and Curdie, Luckiest Girl Alive

I don’t tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but I’ve always been a sucker for stories about people trying not to freeze to death. In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Journey of the USS Jeannette was not only a suspenseful, exciting story, but it was exceptionally researched and suffused with narrative excellence. In 1879, the USS Jeannette headed off to the North Pole, captained by the capable and ambitious George Washington De Long. Their goal was to reach the North Pole…

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Seraphina Sequel (Awesome!), The Princess and the Goblin

I basically spent all my reading time this week finishing up Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina. I’ll have a full review on the release date in March, but I will spoil you for it by saying that it lived up to the full promise of the original–and then some! In read aloud land, we finished up The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, the Scottish writer whom CS Lewis admired so such. I was deeply moved by the story, which is fey in…

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The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan

Synopsis: Anais has never known a family, having spent her entire life in the foster system, and now it seems she’ll be trading the small bit of freedom she still has for a jail sentence. Review: The Panopticon‘s marketing copy would have you believe that it’s another dystopian YA story. If you write it off because you’re weary of the genre, then you’ll be missing out. Anais is one of the most alive characters I’ve ever experienced in a book. For all her vulgarity and…

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Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley

I tried really, really hard to finish this book but halfway through it got deemed “life’s too short.” Winterbirth is epic fantasy of the George RR Martin variety–lots of loyalty oaths, warring kinsmen, and creeping winter. But the emphasis is on war, not on character adventure, and I find it hard to get into war stories under the best of circumstances.

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